by Graham Smith
The fact that all three of the latest victims seemed to have been killed at different times, though all at Highstead Castle, made her wonder if the killer had a connection to the house. Max Cooper had told them he’d recently bought the place, therefore she needed to concentrate on the previous owners – families who knew the building and more than just its existence – who would know of the twin cellars, and of the building’s isolation.
The killer would have an affinity to the house. Perhaps they’d see it as a special place, one worthy of being the scene of a murder. Could that account for the connection with the dragons? Some mythical link which the killer believed tied the beasts to certain locations? Even as she thought this, Beth recognised the idea as fanciful. Still, until they had a suspect to focus on, they had to consider all possibilities. While to Beth, mythology was nothing more than a collection of tall tales embellished through centuries of retelling, she knew many people believed in horoscopes, the occult and dozens of other things that defied logic, so there was no way she was going to discount any mythological connection without hard evidence.
Though none of this explained why Angus Keane had been left at Arthuret Hall. This was out of sync with the other killings in terms of location; therefore she reasoned that either Angus or Arthuret Hall was significant in some way.
Beth cast her mind back to the beginning of the day and re-ran the interviews with the potential suspects for the murder of Angus Keane. None had presented a strong reason or motive to kill the builder, and the meetings had all passed without incident. The only thing of note had been the man who’d given her the creeps in the way he’d stared at her scar. But even that hadn’t been worth remarking on at the time.
His gazing had gone beyond a polite look, travelled past the point of interest and had set up base camp at obsession. The man’s eyes hadn’t held lust or longing, rather they’d suggested he was reconstructing her, transporting her back to the time before a scarred cheek dominated her looks.
Beth dismissed thoughts of the man on the basis that he had not seemed a likely suspect in other regards, and reasoned that if she suspected every person who looked at her strangely, she’d never solve a case.
She turned her mind to her discussion with O’Dowd at Highstead Castle. Of their four-strong team, it looked as if only herself and Paul Unthank were not dealing with personal problems.
Unthank’s world centred on his job and spending time with his fiancée, whereas her life, well, that was about the job and the job alone. Besides, police work was hard on relationships. There were unrelenting shift patterns, the traumas of the job and a dozen other reasons why coppers struggled to maintain long relationships. If love came her way, so be it, but she wasn’t interested in looking for it.
Her friends were forever trying to set her up with someone, but none of the guys they suggested appealed to her. She was confident that she’d find someone herself, but for the time being, she was in no hurry.
Another concern was how distracted her superiors were. O’Dowd had intimated to her that Thompson had turned down her offer of a transfer to another team where he’d be able to work less-intense hours, and the DI’s situation was such that Beth didn’t think today’s lapse of focus would necessarily be a solitary event.
The severity of the case demanded that all the detectives be at the top of their respective games. Distractions caused by family issues, regardless of how upsetting they might be, couldn’t be tolerated if they were to succeed in catching the killer. As it was, it looked as if Dylan’s father had been murdered after they’d got the case, and it would be horrific if another life were to be lost because the team lacked direction. As much as she felt for both Thompson and O’Dowd, she knew they would need to put their personal problems aside before more people were killed. In the meantime, she resolved to do everything she could to solve the case, covering for her new colleagues if necessary.
Forty-Two
The shower pummelled his body with spikes of icy water but he didn’t reach for the controls. He’d set the temperature to its lowest setting the way he always did when he was ready to rinse the suds from his body.
Cold was his friend. He much preferred it to heat. Too many times in his life, he’d suffered because of heat, and now he made sure that he never felt heat in the wrong way again.
Drinks and meals were allowed to cool until they were tepid before he consumed them. His home was always cool, and when the sun blazed from the sky, he’d slather himself with sunblock so his skin didn’t burn.
His body was covered with scars, but he’d never been into battle. At least, not in a physical sense. The battles he fought were psychological. For too many years he’d been dominated by a vicious dragon and had endured all manner of punishments.
Every scar on his body told of a lost battle.
His combatant was the person who should have cared for him. Giving birth to him may have turned a wife into a parent, but it didn’t mean it turned her into a good one. And after his father’s death, his mother had grown more vicious with every passing week. Complaints became criticisms, which became punishments.
When he turned seven, the punishments were no longer delivered with an open hand. On the day of his eighth birthday, he was made to stand in silence while his mother stubbed out a cigarette on his chest. His crime – a missed full stop in a ‘thank you’ letter he’d written to an aunt for the football he’d received as a birthday gift.
As he aged, the punishments became worse. His mother would blow her cigarette smoke in his face at every opportunity and when she wasn’t lashing him with her viperous tongue, she was stubbing out cigarettes on his body.
She was careful to concentrate on his torso, until his back and chest were a patchwork of scars both old and new. He’d been made to stand and endure the punishments in silence. His lips and inner cheeks became scarred from his attempts to not cry out or plead with her to stop. He’d learned the hard way that begging and pleading with his mother had no effect other than the hardening of her resolve. When he swore at her aged thirteen, she’d put out her cigarette on his tongue then made him wait until she smoked another so she could repeat the punishment.
Like any normal teenager, he’d developed an interest in sex, and when she caught him looking at a girl from the local village in a way she deemed unacceptable, three cigarettes had been extinguished on his scrotum.
When he’d managed to get himself free of her, she’d remained in his thoughts.
He never showed his scarred body to anyone. He didn’t build any relationships with women as he couldn’t bear the idea of them seeing the results of his punishments. Even if he insisted on keeping the lights off, caressing fingers would have found the scars.
He’d considered visiting a prostitute on several occasions, but had always found an excuse not to do so. He knew it was a form of cowardice, but he’d rather die a virgin than expose himself and see pity in a woman’s eyes.
As he towelled himself off, he thought about the day ahead of him and all the things he must do. Some were more appealing than others, but that was the way of his life.
Forty-Three
Beth stood in front of the desk and explained to the librarian why she was there. She got a raised eyebrow and an instruction to give the librarian a few minutes until she found the necessary books.
The morning had gone well so far. O’Dowd was back to her irascible best and even Thompson had seemed focussed.
A check of the registry for births, deaths and marriages had identified the Dylan mentioned on the male victim’s arm. Dylan Langley had died six weeks before his third birthday. He was survived by his mother Melanie, and father Nick, who had been reported missing yesterday morning when he hadn’t come home on Monday night. O’Dowd had gone to deliver the death knock with an FLO. Before the DI left, she’d requisitioned a spare pair of hands to go through the missing persons’ reports to look at possible identities for the two women. Anything that could narrow the search would give them
a much-needed advantage.
The librarian returned with a stack of books, some she’d retrieved from the Jackson Library. She told Beth those books were rare and could not be removed from the premises, but the others could be withdrawn.
Beth found a table and started to scan through the first of the books. It was the tome she’d found online: Benson’s Guide to North West Country Houses. As interesting as she found it, Beth was keenly aware time wasn’t on her side, so she flicked her eyes across the descriptions looking for words like ‘derelict’ or ‘abandoned’.
She wrote the names of the houses which met those criteria on a notepad, but after completing the book, had only a few stately homes on her list. Beth wasn’t sure if this was a good or a bad thing. It would narrow down their search criteria, which was good, but it also meant that perhaps there were other places that hadn’t made it into the book.
Plus, the book itself was old news, it was published more than twenty years ago, which meant there were two decades for houses to have fallen derelict to lost fortunes or the ravages of fire since then.
There were many other possibilities Beth was sure she was missing, but at the same time, the book was comprehensive and while some of the stately homes, manor houses and castles were familiar to her, the majority were ones she’d never heard of.
She bit down on a yawn and picked up the book she’d requested on Highstead Castle. It wasn’t for lending, so she made copious notes about the castle’s history and turned her attention back to the first book she’d consulted.
Beth didn’t want to waste too much precious time on her research, so she used Google Maps to identify the locations of the names she’d discovered, and mapped out three possibilities which, like Highstead Castle and Arthuret Hall, were in the north-eastern part of Cumbria. Next she picked up a couple of books that listed Scottish country houses and searched for ones in the eastern areas of Dumfries and Galloway. She knew it was a long shot and may well prove to be time wasted, but she was trying to cover every eventuality she could think of.
What surprised her most was the number of grand houses in the county. She loved Cumbria and had thought she had a good handle on the area and its people, but the snippets of history she’d absorbed during her search had left her wanting to know more.
The houses dated back to Georgian, Jacobean, Tudor and Victorian times, although most of them had been rebuilt at some point in their history. Their owners included philanthropists, slave traders and a dozen other professions as the march of time deposed feudal landowners in favour of more peaceful owners.
Many of the houses, especially in the northern parts of the region, had been sacked by the reiving Scots. Beth knew from long-ago history lessons that, for a number of years in the seventeenth century, Carlisle Castle had been in Scottish hands.
As instructed by O’Dowd, she passed the locations and names of all the possible sites she’d found to Control so they could send officers to search them for bodies. Beth also passed on the details of the ones she’d found in Northumberland and Dumfries and Galloway, but she didn’t expect they’d receive the same priority as the ones in Cumbria.
She gathered up her notes and filed them all into the laptop bag she used as a briefcase. A snap decision made her trot down the stairs from the library and go to the cookie stall. With several cookies in a bag, she felt prepared to face the remainder of the day, comfortable in the knowledge there would be an energising sugar boost at hand.
While she drove back down the M6 towards Penrith and Carleton Hall, Beth ran a new series of questions through her head. Most of them had her finding more questions than answers, but at least they would open up some other lines of enquiry.
Forty-Four
When she looked up from her desk to scan the showroom for customers who may need her attention, Sarah Hardy saw a man who made her think today just couldn’t get any worse. It had started off badly and it had now taken another turn south. The rot had set in when she’d missed her mouth while taking a drink of orange juice. The liquid had splashed not just her crisp white blouse but had also soaked her skirt making it stick to her thigh.
That had necessitated a last-minute outfit change. Instead of the tight burgundy skirt which clung to her hips, she now wore a flared one. While inches longer, this one had a habit of riding up when she wasn’t paying attention. To exacerbate the problem, she’d put a fingernail through her last pair of tights and hadn’t had time to replace them.
She could accept flashing a little extra thigh for a handsome man with money, but for the older guy who was ambling across the showroom, it was a different matter. He may think he was being discreet when he looked at her, but it was obvious where his gaze was landing.
The blouse was another mistake. Where the first one had been loose and billowy, this one was tight across her bust and she knew that it often gaped enough to show her bra when she put her shoulders back.
The man came nearer and nearer, and it was then she remembered that he was here for a test drive. She’d forgotten to put the appointment in her diary and now she’d have to take him out and spend at least half an hour in his unsettling company.
She looked around for a colleague to offload the man to, and to heck with the commission she’d lose, but she saw they were all busy. With nothing left to do but accept the situation, Sarah rose to her feet and applied a fake smile.
‘Good morning. Are you here for your test drive?’
‘I am indeed, my dear.’
Sarah knew the ‘my dear’ was a generational thing but it still rankled her. As did sweetheart, love and a thousand other terms of address which demeaned women.
‘If you just give me five minutes, I’ll get the car ready for you.’
As she walked across to speak to the Dealer Principal to find out which car to take, she could sense the customer’s eyes caressing her bare legs. She almost hoped the right model wasn’t available. As she’d neglected to log the test drive, there was every possibility of that being the case, but that wouldn’t help her in the end. She’d either lose the sale, or worse, he’d come back another time. Her luck wasn’t in today though.
As she walked across the forecourt with him, she took the precaution of positioning herself in a way that hid any possible gapes in her blouse from his prying eyes. Sarah led the man – she was at a loss as to his name, and didn’t dare to mentally christen him with a nickname in case she called him Larry the Lech, or some other insult to his face – across to the car. She got him into the driver’s seat and showed him the controls to adjust it to suit his preferred driving position.
When she slid into the passenger seat, she made sure that her skirt was tucked beneath her bottom and that there wasn’t a hand lying in wait for her. With her seatbelt on, she told him to proceed in his own time.
A mile down the road she’d exhausted her small talk about the car. The man had listened to her spiel with only the odd word or nod as acknowledgement of what she was saying.
‘This is a very beautiful car.’
It took all of Sarah’s self-control not to shudder at the way he drew out the word ‘beautiful’. His inflection made the concept of beauty appear seedy.
A junction appeared ahead of them, and when the man pulled to a halt he checked both ways several times before drawing out. Sarah knew it was so he could spend a few seconds looking her way.
They were on a straight piece of road now and he drove at a low speed with regular glances at the mirrors. When they pulled up behind a car waiting to turn across oncoming traffic, he looked around the car then dropped his gaze to her legs.
‘There’s plenty of room in here. I mean, you’re quite tall and you appear to have more than enough room for those long legs of yours.’
‘Yes, it’s very spacious.’
Even as the words left her mouth, Sarah was sickened by what she was putting up with to make a sale, yet there was no way of changing the narrative.
Except there was.
At the first
opportunity, she’d tell the lie and watch him pull back. She’d learned years ago that the best way to deal with unwelcome advances was to pretend to have a boyfriend.
They reached another junction and this time she turned her head and gave him a report on the oncoming traffic, or rather, the lack of it.
He pulled away after a sizeable delay, but at least she hadn’t had to endure his gaze. Rather than wait for the opportunity to slip the lie into conversation, she decided to create it.
‘This is a very nice car. My boyfriend has the same model. He loves it.’
‘As well he should. It’s a lovely car he can use to drive a lovely lady.’ The man gave a contented smile. ‘He’s a very lucky man.’
Sarah wasn’t sure if the man meant her fictitious boyfriend was lucky because of his car or girlfriend, but she suspected the latter and had to fight not to pull a face.
‘He is.’ She pointed at a sign indicating an approaching junction. ‘If you take that road it’ll bring us back towards the dealership.’
‘You certainly know your way around. Feel free to say no, my dear, but how do you feel about stopping for a bite of lunch before we return?’
This was too much for Sarah to tolerate without laying down a marker. ‘I’m sorry, but I have a very busy schedule today, and if my boss was to find out I was fraternising with a customer, I would get the sack. And I have to warn you, my boyfriend is a very jealous man.’
‘Of course, my dear. I was only trying to be kind. I was feeling hungry and thought you might be too.’
The lack of rebuke in the man’s voice combined with his polite, even tone made Sarah feel as though she’d been too harsh with her reply. Maybe the old guy was just lonely.
She’d have left her thoughts there had he not snuck a look at her legs when reaching down to fiddle with the controls for the air conditioning.